Lay Me Down Gently Sky Crane Set To Lower Curiosity Down To Mars Surface
*HIGH-STAKES MARS Forecast RELIES ON Uncooked 'SKY CRANE'At first rosiness, by way of a rocket-powered flying winch to reduce a 2.5 billion nuclear-powered itinerant to the draw to a close of Mars seems risky at best. But engineers say it solves a host of daunting challenges. by William Harwood The highest achievement, fall and landing of the Mars Science Laboratory requires free routing, a supersonic braking parachute and an novel "sky winch" distribution to reduce the nuclear-powered itinerant to the draw to a close of the red planet.(Credit: NASA) * CNET NEWS- The ask is straightforward: how to get a car-size itinerant decisively to the draw to a close of Mars? And not lone somewhere, but to a very highly rigid bull-s-eye on the keep in of a broad hollow space, appearing in itinerant make unfriendly of a 3-mile-high climax.In former ventures to Mars, spacecraft generate either bounced to the draw to a close cocooned in giant airbags or finished the shot atop a rocket-powered fall steamroll. But neither comportment was an try for NASA's Curiosity itinerant, the focus of the 2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory directive.Tipping the scales at one ton, the nuclear-powered Curiosity, a rolling laboratory disposed moreover a scenery of state-of-the-art cameras and instruments, is too giant to use airbags neighboring the ones that cushioned the landings of NASA's to a large extent minor Pathfinder and the greatly winning Principal and Ability rovers.Era a legged lander may possibly do the lure, fundamental braking rockets would be vital to get Curiosity to the draw to a close. The see through freedom of the fall steamroll would key in a daunting industriousness challenge: get a great itinerant decisively down to the draw to a close from a defray many feet boss the ground atop its lander."This itinerant is 900 kilograms, it is a animal, it is the freedom of a car," thought Steve Stream, an highest achievement, fall and landing designer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "So you're pebbly to land everything very fat, so that means you misery abundant engines."More than fundamental rocket engines may possibly sting up billowing clouds of dry soil as the lander approached touchdown "so you honor to goal to put in storage the engines exterior in another place from the draw to a close," Stream thought."That makes you goal to generate longer legs, and having longer legs means your center of gravity is director and furthermore it's to a large extent easier to tip over," he thought. "Or you misery to be very bulky. It tends to drive you [to a] big and big [lander] in invent to do that and be unending."Plus give to is the tiny comfortable of getting the itinerant down to the draw to a close after landing."Let's say you solved all that and were able to land and you now had to drive a one-ton itinerant off the top of a booth, either down ramps or several other kindly of spiral," Stream thought. "If you were leaning in a way that conceivably wasn't positive to your wheels, neighboring you were glimpse to your side, you may possibly slip along off the ramps. Maybe give to are rocks somewhere the bottoms of the ramps would commonly hunch and you can't deploy the put off in the first organize."Influence Rank AND Intelligence PHOTOS AT CNET Hearsay.